Homeschooling ADD Kids

If you homeschool a child with ADD, you’ve probably noticed by now that he has an obsession.  Most all ADD kids do.  It might be a hobby or a sport or something else that fascinates him such as dinosaurs or volcanoes.  But whatever it is he probably likes to talk about it more than anything else.  And he likes to watch shows that have to do with this interest and buy toys and other things related to it.

So how can you use your child’s obsession as an aid in homeschooling?

Simply put, by unit studies.  If you’ve heard of unit studies before you probably know where I’m going with this.  If you haven’t heard of them, then you should definitely learn as much as you can about them since they can be extremely effective in teaching children with ADD.

Unit studies are single topics examined from different angles in order to enable homeschool teachers to teach math, reading, science, social studies and other school subjects while learning about the topic.

So instead of saying ‘now we’re going to start math,’ you tell your child ‘now let’s learn more about xyz (fill in his obsession here)’.  Since he’s already intensely interested in the topic, he’ll automatically have a more positive attitude toward learning.  Also, since school subjects such are taught while learning about the topic, he gets to see how such subjects are used in real life and how they are related to his favorite hobby, sport or other interest.

For example, Steven (my 12-year old brother-in-law whom my wife and I homeschool) loves cars.  He can’t stop talking about  them, drawing them, making stories up about them, etc.  He’s obsessed with cars.  So instead of teaching him just reading, math, grammar, science and so forth we teach him about cars.  Then, as he learns more about cars, he learns many of the regular school subjects.

Once you identify your child’s obsession, how do you find the type of information that will enable you to teach him more about his interest while also teaching him essential school subjects?

Well, there’s a free way and one in which you pay for the info.  Here are the basic steps you can use to create your own unit studies for free:

(1)     Go to your favorite search engine, such as Google, and type in your child’s favorite topic. In Steven’s case we simply typed in “cars”.

(2)    From the list of retrieved websites look for sites with useful info about the topic.  Don’t limit yourself to just text and pictures; try to find sites that include audio and video files and maybe even games and projects.

(3)    Once you find such sites, ask yourself whether the information there  explains the history of the topic, the science behind it, or can be used to teach about different countries.  Is there any info that can be used to construct math problems?  Can the information be used to teach about the environment or art?  If not, move on to other sites.

(4)    If some of them can be used to teach school subjects, then bookmark them (or save them as “favorites” in your web browser), preferably in a folder that you can label so that you know that all links within the folder lead to sites related to your child’s obsession.

(5)    When you’re ready to start teaching, just open up that folder in your Favorites or Bookmarks and start to browse through the info with your child.  If some sections are written at your child’s reading level, have him read the text.  If not, either read it to him or paraphrase it.  View the pictures, video files and listen to the audio.

(6)    After reading through some info or viewing/listening to video/audio files, ask some questions related to it.  Don’t focus too much on trivia such as specific dates (although you might want him to at least remember the century or decade that something happened).  Also don’t worry too much about names of people of little importance in the field.  Instead, try to give attention to giving him a general knowledge of the subject and helping him to see how science, math, reading, geography and the like are all directly related to his area of interest.

(7)    Work on projects together for which you might find instructions on some of the sites.

Admittedly, creating your own unit studies can be very time-consuming.  Another way to make use of unit studies is by purchasing them.  How?  Where?  I’ll explain that in my next blog post, coming soon.

In: unit studies | tags: child's obsession, unit studies. | #